Snowdrops and Roses
by Melethril
Summary: "The teenager's right hand was absently caressing a white horse's mane. Together in the fresh snow, they looked like they were part of the wintry landscape. Jack had always thought that Zero was a winter child."


**Snowdrops and Roses**

_A/N: Weird little one-shot that came to mind after watching "Rise of the Guardians" for the first time. I've never tampered with either fandom, so it's strange to start with a crossover. I've only watched the first couple of episodes of Vampire Knight's season one (the rest of the information for this one-shot is from Vampire Knight Wiki), but when I saw Jack Frost, I was immediately reminded of Zero. _

_It's obviously AU for both fandoms, because Jack Frost has never been seen by anyone before becoming a guardian and meeting Jamie and it's AU for Vampire Knight because, well, while it contains vampires, it certainly doesn't have any personified spirits. _

_For Vampire Knight, it takes place after the second episode ("Memory of Blood").  
For Rise of the Guardians, Jack has just recently become a guardian. It's the first winter after their encounter with Pitch._

_And this author's note has just gotten longer than the story. Just one more thing: Happy New Year!_

* * *

He never should have left. Jack knew that.

He'd never wanted to leave, but if you had control over the winter, you had to give way to spring.

Always.

Seasonal spirits travelled all across the globe. Even 300 years after becoming a winter spirit, Jack still wondered whether they came with the season or the season came with them. He had no idea. It wasn't as if becoming a winter spirit had come with a handbook.

However, he quickly learned that he wasn't the only winter spirit around, and that not all of them were friendly. The region he was currently in was jealously guarded by _Yuki-onna_, the Snow Woman. She wasn't kind, she wasn't nice and she delighted in giving the human world a hard time. However, ever since she'd married a few decades ago, she occasionally let Jack handle the winters in her territory. Not that she used to ask him, or talk to him for an extended period of time, but she'd made her point quite clear.

Before becoming a guardian he'd hardly held any conversations with a being other than himself with the exception of...

Jack sighed.

He never should have left.

"_Hello."_

_Jack flinched when a little boy, no older than nine, looked straight at him with open curiosity. It was as if the ice had slipped his control and frozen him on the spot. He stared at the boy whose hair colour was identical to his and who probably would have been mistaken for his baby brother if humans were able to see him._

"_My name is Zero. What's yours?" the boy asked quietly. He was very serious, but his eyes were bright with kindness and unconcealed interest._

_Jack opened his mouth and closed it again. He had no idea what to say. Other than the occasional encounter with another spirit, he hadn't talked to someone else in several decades._

"_I... I..." he stuttered._

"_Your feet must be cold," Zero stated worriedly, once he finished inspecting his new acquaintance and therefore realised that the stranger was standing barefoot in the snow. "Come with me, I will find you a pair of shoes."_

"_No, no!" Jack finally managed to gasp. "That's not necessary. Thank you."_

"_I don't want you to get sick," the boy said firmly, almost sternly. _

"_I won't... I... You can see me," the winter sprite whispered in amazement. A bright, enthusiastic smile stole its way onto his lips and he laughed. "You can see me!"_

_He had the urge to hug the child, swing him around and lift him on his shoulders like he used to do with... The thought slipped away before he could fully form it._

"_Of course, I can see you. You..." The boy suddenly looked terrified and stumbled backward. "You can't be a vampire," he muttered. "They feel different, but Yagari-_sensei_ said that I had to be careful; that things aren't always as they seem."_

_Vampire? He'd met a few over the years. The lower levels didn't even notice him. Nobles and purebloods however could see him and they weren't exactly nice to him. He gave purebloods a very wide berth for good reasons._

"_No, no, I'm not... I'm a spirit, a... I bring the snow," he finished lamely. It wasn't easy to describe yourself when you didn't know who you were in the first place. The look of sheer horror on Zero's face reminded him whose territory he currently occupied._

"_No, I'm not here to hurt you. I just... I want to bring joy. I like snow. Do you like snow as well?"_

_Carefully, Zero nodded. _

"_Then let's do something with it."_

_And they did. They built snowmen, ran up a hill and sleighed down with an improvised sleigh built by Jack (he was a winter sprite, of course he knew how to build a sleigh), started a snowball fight and had a great time until a shout interrupted them._

"_What are you doing?" _

_A boy, looking identical to Zero, appeared. He was breathing heavily and was coughing frequently. He shouldn't be outside. Zero was quickly by his brother's side and let the boy use him as support._

"_I've met a new friend. Ichiru, this is Jack Frost, Jack, this is Ichiru, my brother," he introduced them, but to Jack's dismay, the boy was confused._

"_Zero," Ichiru spoke hesitatingly. "There is nobody here."_

"_Of course, there is..." he began, but stopped when he remembered what Jack had told him about being invisible to people._

_Jack was irrationally proud of his new-found friend. He was pretty smart._

_Ichiru coughed again and Zero insisted on getting him inside, but the sick boy would not be deterred from the strange topic until Zero said something about having an invisible friend. _

_Instead of calling his twin brother silly, Ichiru looked hurt._

"_Am I not enough for you? Is it because I'm so weak that that I can't walk through snow without feeling ill? Do you now need to play with imaginary friends?" the boy whispered, painfully grabbing Zero's shoulder and Jack was torn between feeling sympathy and a significant amount of fear in the face of the twin's jealous anger. He didn't like the dynamic between the boys, especially when he saw Zero's obvious distress at his brother's words. He quickly refuted the accusations and led his ill brother home. However, Zero did turn back apologetically and smiled weakly._

It wasn't the only time they'd met. Several times in the course of four seasons, they spent their days in the snow, laughing and having fun, though it was sometimes cut short whenever Ichiru decided to follow his brother and Zero had no wish to hurt his twin's feelings by playing with an 'imaginary friend' in his preence.

Jack felt very comfortable in being the teasing, older brother who taught Zero as much as he could. In return, Zero told of his training and his destiny as a vampire hunter, a calling he seemed to view as an honour. However, one day, Zero simply disappeared and while his sudden absence had stung, Jack had merely assumed that Zero and Ichiru moved away. It was only after becoming a guardian that he tried looking for him again. _Yuki-onna_ had grudgingly allowed him into her territory.

It was silly, he knew, but he couldn't help it.

Zero had to be seventeen now and even though his ability to see Jack had very little to do with believing in the existence of spirits and rather with the inherited _knowledge_ of a vampire hunter that some nightmares were real, it was unlikely that the boy still knew who he was, or was even able to see him. Still, he looked and looked and looked. It took him nearly four weeks of incessant search (and he hadn't meant to create that blizzard, he'd just had to vent his frustration somehow! Thankfully, nobody had been hurt), but he ultimately found out that Zero was now a student at Cross Academy.

While fate and the Man in the Moon had finally decided to give him a break by giving him a family and a purpose, they seemed to have delighted in wrecking Zero's life. The boy had lost his family and, given the aura that enveloped the silver-haired boy like a cloak of doom, his entire existence to a pureblood's need for vengeance.

Jack Frost was only fifty feet away from the only person who'd seen him before Jamie, and he didn't know whether or not he should close the distance.

Zero, the young vampire hunter, was now a vampire himself. It was cruel irony that wasn't funny at all and Jack hated it, though never as much as Zero had to hate himself.

The seventeen-year-old was sitting on a brick wall, his toes barely touching the ground. Even from the distance, Jack recognised the melancholy all too well. The teenager's right hand was absently caressing a white horse's mane.

Together in the fresh snow, they looked like they were part of the wintry landscape.

Jack had always thought that Zero was a winter child. He wondered that, if his friend died, the Man in the Moon would make him a spirit as well.

"Hello, Zero," he said, once he decided that hovering in the background for hours wouldn't change anything.

The hunter straightened slightly, but he didn't stiffen or turn around.

"Jack Frost," Zero murmured quietly and Jack felt relieved, happy and terrified at the same time.

"Hey," was his hesitant reply.

Zero turned his head to face Jack. The last years had taken a toll on the gentle soul he'd once known. His bright eyes displayed intelligence, severity and deep-rooted anger. Jack couldn't help but flinch when the boy's accusing gaze met his.

What kind of older brother was he? First, his sister had to grow up all on her own, now he abandoned another sibling!

Zero immediately noticed his reaction (he'd always been good at that) and quickly rose from the brick wall.

'_Wow! He's grown tall_," Jack thought amazed. He then carefully met the teenager's eyes again and saw a glimpse of the gentleness and ever-present concern he remembered witnessing whenever Zero had noticed Ichiru following them.

"I... How... Long time no see?" he asked rather than stated with a pitiful attempt at levity, putting a wide smile on his face. He hated this tension.

Zero didn't smile back (_he always smiled back_!); he just looked at him with a guarded expression.

"Long time indeed," he said ultimately.

Jack couldn't take the tension and blurted out, "I'm sorry. I was looking for you and you were gone and I figured that you moved and I didn't know where and _Yuki-onna_ told me to get out of her territory if I didn't want to be smothered in my sleep, and she's scary as hell I tell you, and then the guardians needed my help and I became a guardian myself and I was so busy I hardly knew how to get everything done, but then I figured '_Hey, I could use my change of status to my advantage and bribe _Yuki-onna_ into letting me look for you'_ and..."

A hand on his mouth silenced him before he could justify himself further.

"Stop talking," Zero spoke harshly, looking as if he had a headache. "Why do people talk so much?" His expression grew considerably gentler by the second and he lowered his hand. "Forget about it. There is nothing to forgive." Then he added curiously, "Guardians?"

The winter sprite recognized the hunter's expression and smiled genuinely without false cheer. It was good to see that the boy he used to know was still in there somewhere, even though that boundless curiosity could be exhausting at times.

"Long story," he stretched the words to indicate just how long his explanation would be. "You look like you haven't had a snowball fight in ages," Jack then said with a playfully thoughtful expression and Zero's eyes widened in response.

"You wouldn't..."

But there was very little that Jack would not do to bring a little cheer back into Zero's life.

"You better run."

And he did. Unless the wind was messing with Jack's hearing, Zero whispered '_that crazy winter sprite better be prepared for war' _as he skilfully made his way through the snow. Anyway, the yelp certainly wasn't his imagination, neither was the snowball that flew his way. Halfway through their fight, he finally heard his little brother laugh heartily. It was near-silent, but it was there and that was more than enough.

For now.


End file.
